Episode 21: Indonesia- Living Through Dictatorship and Resistance. Part 3 of 3

This is an independent, three part episode, featuring a special guest who lived through the massacres, repression, assassinations, and government upheaval in Indonesia during the tumultuous political period following independence from the Dutch, about which many Americans have not heard. It is our intention that this episode can serve as an oral history source to document these events. This recording was made on April 28th 2017 with the interviewee, Kemal Taruc, and recorded with PhD students James Robinson, Bridget Keown, Jamie Parker, Matt Bowser, and Professor Heather Streets-Salter.

This is episode three. In this episode, Kemal discusses his life in the years after the student movement and how he remained involved in the struggle to build a better and just Indonesia.

For a full transcription of this episode, please click this link.

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Theme Music: Kieran Legg

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Episode 20: Indonesia- Living Through Dictatorship and Resistance. Part 2 of 3

This is an independent, three part episode, featuring a special guest who lived through the massacres, repression, assassinations, and government upheaval in Indonesia during the tumultuous political period following independence from the Dutch, about which many Americans have not heard. It is our intention that this episode can serve as an oral history source to document these events. This recording was made on April 28th 2017 with the interviewee, Kemal Taruc, and recorded with PhD students James Robinson, Bridget Keown, Jamie Parker, Matt Bowser, and Professor Heather Streets-Salter.

This is Episode II. In this episode, Kemal talks about being a young man being brought up during Sukarno’s overthrow and the resulting military dictatorship under Suharto. He traces his years as a student, his involvement in the resistance movement, and his memories of his comrades. Most notably, he tells the untold story of the political assassination of the Minister of Public Works, who supported his resistance.

 

For a full transcription of this episode, go here.

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Theme Music: Kieran Legg

Episode 19: Indonesia- Living Through Dictatorship and Resistance. Part 1 of 3

This is an independent, three part episode, featuring a special guest who lived through the massacres, repression, assassinations, and government upheaval in Indonesia during the tumultuous political period following independence from the Dutch, about which many Americans have not heard. It is our intention that this episode can serve as an oral history source to document these events. This recording was made on April 28th 2017 with the interviewee, Kemal Taruc, and recorded with PhD students James Robinson, Bridget Keown, Jamie Parker, Matt Bowser, and Professor Heather Streets-Salter.

Indonesia, like many other places, was a site of anti-colonial struggle. These global anti-colonial struggles often took the form of nascent nationalism, that utilized a variety of different ideologies, including communism, socialism, religious, and military ideology. In Indonesia specifically, these struggles took three unique forms: there was the Communist Party, which was one of the largest in the world; the Islamic movement, Nagara, which was sizeable as Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims in the world; the third was the Indonesia Armed Forces, which played a significant role in the armed struggle against the Dutch and the Japanese. After World War Two, the Dutch tried to reclaim the country, and the various Indonesian factions fought back under a united banner. An intellectual named Sukarno, a long time symbol of anti colonialism, became recognized as a leader of the movement, and gradually rose to power by making promises to each faction. By 1957, he tired of political infighting among the factions, and instituted the idea of ‘guided democracy’, which was in reality a transition to an autocracy that lasted until his overthrow in 1965. Throughout his rule, he was still playing sides in order to retain power. Eventually however, the military began to grow suspicious of his leftist leanings, and his growing alliance with the Soviets. They instituted a coup, aided by the CIA, that overthrew Sukarno’s government, and instituted a conservative, right wing government that allied with Muslims and immediately began taking action against Communists and suspected Communists. This resulted in the death of an estimated 1 million people, and the torture and displacement of millions more. In the 1970s, the government was still trying to put down perceived dissidence, and this is where our subject’s story really begins. He was one of the leaders of the student movement which pushed back against the dictatorship. Because of the United States covert involvement in Sukarno’s overthrow, especially because of the list they supplied to the military about Communists and suspected Communists, very little personal history of this period has emerged, especially in western schools. We hope that this oral history will help students learn more about what life was like during this period in Indonesia, and about the activism that students engaged in during this time.

This is episode one. In this episode, we trace the history of the Indonesian struggle for independence, and the resulting political upheaval, through the actions of Kemal’s politically active family. He also discusses his experiences during the coup, and how he and his family survived the massacres that followed.

For a full transcription of this episode, go here: breakinghistorypodcast.com/kemal-taruc…ipt-part-1/

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Theme Music: Kieran Legg

Episode 18: Gender and Labor in France with Dr. Laura Frader

Join us as we talk to Dr. Laura Frader about her work in labor and gender! We talk about working class patterns in France, and connecting her work to women’s history. We then talk about her current project on the Treaty of Rome and gender equality policies. Dr. Frader speaks to her own experience working in the academy and the problems of gender inequality and labor.

Dr. Frader’s research focuses on the historical and cultural foundations of social inequality, particularly gender inequality in modern Europe. She is currently working on the history of gender equality policies of the European Community since the Treaty of Rome (1957) and their impacts on member states. Her publications include Gender and Class in Modern Europe (co-edited with Sonya O. Rose, Cornell University Press, 1996), Race in France: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference (co-edited with Herrick Chapman, Berghahn, 2004); and Breadwinners and Citizens: Gender in the Making of the French Social Model (Duke University Press, 2008) as well as many articles in English and French-language books and journals.

 

From This Episode:

Books Discussed:

What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France
by Mary Louise Roberts

Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality
by Marilyn Lake, Henry Reynolds

Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa
by Richard Price

Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense
by Ann Laura Stoler

World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict
by Heather E. Streets-Salter

News from the Northeastern Graduate History Association:

Submit a paper to the Northeastern University Graduate History Association’s 10th Annual Graduate World History Conference!
It is scheduled for March 24th-25th and the keynote speaker is Ann Laura Stoler!
For more information: nuhistorygrads.wordpress.com/conference/

Statement from the History Graduate Student Association on graduate employee unionization: “We would like to say that, as a members of the History Graduate Student Association, we assert the right of graduate employees to organize a union and collectively bargain, and we condemn the actions of Northeastern’s administration is spreading misleading emails, harassing union activists, and spending enormous sums on anti-union law firms.”

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Theme Music: Kieran Legg

Episode 17: Soviet Film and the 100th Anniversary of the October Revolution with Harlow Robinson

Join us as we interview Dr. Harlow Robinson on the 100th anniversary of the Russia’s October Revolution. How is the October Revolution remembered? What is its legacy? How did Soviet filmmakers and American filmmakers interact? How did Dr. Robinson navigate academia during the Cold War? How did Russian emigres influence the study of Soviet history in the US? How is the Soviet Union remembered today? Dr. Robinson also reflects on his academic career as he approaches teaching retirement (though not writing retirement!)

Matthews Distinguished University Professor Dr. Harlow Robinson is a specialist in Soviet and Russian cultural history, and has written widely on Soviet film and the performing arts. His major publications include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography, which has appeared in five editions; The Last Impresario: The Life, Times and Legacy of Sol Hurok; and Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev, which he edited and translated. His book, Russians in Hollywood: Hollywood’s Russians was published in 2007. He has also contributed numerous essays, articles and reviews to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Opera News, Opera Quarterly, Dance, Playbill, Symphony and other publications. As a lecturer, he has appeared at the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Music Center Opera, Guggenheim Museum, San Francisco Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival and Bard Festival. He has also worked as a consultant for numerous performing arts organizations, and as a writer and commentator for PBS, NPR and the Canadian Broadcasting System.

 

From this Episode:

Books Discussed:

The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
by Steven Lee Myers

The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia
by Tim Tzouliadis

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
by Anya von Bremzen

City of Thieves
by David Benioff

A Gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Theme Music: Kieran Legg

Episode 16: Ukrainian Women during the Nazi Occupation with Regina Kazyulina

Join Matt Bowser and James Robinson as we are joined by PhD Candidate Regina Kazyulina, as she talks about her dissertation research on the fraternization and collaboration phenomenons of Ukrainian women during the Nazi occupation, and later Soviet reprisals. What exactly did collaboration and fraternization entail? How did women survive the occupation? How did women avoid forced labor? Why was the local population initially sympathetic to the invading Germans but later turned on them? Regina tells us about how she researched these choices women made during the war. How does one keep true when translating documents?

 

From this Episode:

Books Discussed:
Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule
by Karel C. Berkhoff

German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945
by Alexander Dallin

The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath
by István Deák, Jan Tomasz Gross

Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields
by Wendy Lower

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Theme Music: Kieran Legg

Episode 15: Arab Communists in the Interwar Period with Sana Tannoury-Karam

Join Jamie Parker and James Robinson as we sit down with PhD candidate Sana Tannoury-Karam to talk about Arab Communists and the Arab Left in the interwar period through World War Two. We talked about Sana’s journey from studying political science in Beirut to studying history in Boston. She touches on individuals in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq and the evolution of Communist Parties throughout the Arab world from organic local creativity to strict Stalinism. Sana argues for an “internationalist moment” in the interwar period, contrary of the historiography of the region being sectarian and divided. She recounts her research journeys and difficulties consulting resources in the Middle East, especially with her focus on Lebanon and women’s movements with Communism. She also explores the tensions between labor and CPs, and the politics of global anti-fascism.

 

From This Episode:

Books Discussed:

Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon by Elizabeth Thompson

Militant Women of a Fragile Nation by Malek Abisaab

Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 by Zachary Lockman

Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 by Joel Beinin, Zachary Lockman

Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798 -1939 by Albert Hourani

Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Century Until the 1960s by Christoph Schumann

The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 by Ilham Khuri-Makdisi

“The “East” as a Category of Bolshevik Ideology and Comintern Administration: The Arab Section of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East” (article) by Masha Kirasirova,  Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History
Volume 18, Number 1, Winter 2017
pp. 7-34

Picture from Sana’s collection: Workers gathered for the first public celebration of May day in 1925 Beirut. Red flags and slogans of ‘workers of the world unite’.

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Theme Music: Kieran Legg

Episode 14: Dr. Bill Fowler’s Academic Career in Early American/Maritime History

Join Bridget Keown, Matt Bowser, and James Robinson as we join Dr. Bill Fowler, Professor of Early American History and New England Maritime History, educator at Northeastern University from 1971 – 1998, and again 2005 – present (retiring), former President of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1998-2005), and a number of other positions in institutions around New England and elsewhere. He also lectures on cruise ships across the Atlantic.

Dr. Fowler tells us about his career, his thoughts on the place of New England in World History, his experiences at the MHS, being apart of the Boston part of the Bicentennial, being a park ranger in Lexington, and reflects on his plans after academia.

View Dr Fowler’s faculty profile: www.northeastern.edu/cssh/faculty/william-fowler

From This Episode

Books by Dr. Fowler: 

Under Two Flags: The Navy in the Civil War

Silas Talbot: Captain of Old Ironsides

America and the Sea: Treasures from the Collections of Mystic Seaport (co-author)

William Ellery: A Rhode Island Politico and Lord of Admiralty

Rebels Under Sail: The Navy in the Revolution

Jack Tars and Commodores: The American Navy, 1783-1815

Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan

Empires at War: The French and Indian War and The Struggle for North America, 1754-1763

Books Discussed:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail by W. Jeffrey Bolster

The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783-1860 by Samuel Eliot Morison

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors are: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Theme Music was composed by: Kieran Legg

Episode 13- Spatializing Blackness with Rashad Shabazz

Join historians Bridget Keown and James Robinson, with Sociologist Mia Renauld, as we are joined by Dr. Rashad Shabazz, who stopped by Northeastern University to promote his new book, Spatializing Blackness Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago”. We talk about Dr. Shabazz’s academic path and making connections between international carceral containments before arriving at racialization of carceral power in Chicago, and how it manifests from slavery to schools. He explores how masculinity is performed in poor black spaces.

Rashad Shabazz is an associate professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from Minnesota State University-Mankato, a master’s degree from the Department of Justice & Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, and a doctorate in the History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

From this Episode

Books Discussed:

Spatializing Blackness by Rashad Shabazz

Live from Death Row by Mumia Abu-Jamal

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary by Dennis Childs

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault

Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America by Elizabeth Hinton

Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson by George Jackson

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

Schools Under Surveillance: Cultures of Control in Public Education
Eds. Torin Monahan and Rodolfo D. Torres

Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys by Victor Rios
www.goodreads.com/book/show/111558…from_search=true

  • For more on the works of Professor Dillon Rodriguez, please click here.

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Our Producers and Sound Editors are: Matt Bowser and Dan Squizzero
Our Theme Music was composed by: Kieran Legg

Episode 12- Soviet Silencing of Same Sex Desire with Feruza Aripova

Join Bridget Keown, Jackie Gronau, James Robinson, Matt Bowser, and Thanasis Kinias as we join PhD Candidate Feruza Aripova to discuss her research into the suppression of same sex desire in the Soviet Union, either through punishment in the Stalinist era to later pathologizing same sex desire as a disease to be treated. The 1930s saw the rolling back of both legalization of homosexuality and abortion that had been gained by the Revolution. Feruza guides us through what happened, how same sex desire continued in prisons and underground communities, and how her background growing up in Soviet Central Asia shaped her experience. How did same sex desire come to be defined as a threat to the Soviet state and Communist Party? Feruza guides us through her research in the archives in the Baltics, and private archives in Moscow. We round it up with talking about the Women’s Section of the Communist Party in exploring Soviet Feminism, specifically on Alexandra Kollontai.

Books Discussed:

What Is an Apparatus?: And Other Essays by Giorgio Agamben

Gay Life and Culture : A World History by Robert Aldrich

Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia : The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent by Dan Healy

The Keys to Happiness : Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia, by Laura Engelstein

Of Other Spaces“, by Michel Foucault, trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16, no. 1 (April 1, 1986): 22–27. (doi:10.2307/464648)

Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai by A. Kollonati, trans. Alix. Holt

The Sexual Revolution in Russia : From the Age of the Czars to Today, by I.S. Kon

Forced Underground: Homosexuals in Soviet Latvia, by Rita Ruduša, trans. Daina Ruduša

Credits:

Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association

Sound editing: Matt Bowser

Produdcer: Dan Squizzero

Music by Kieran Legg

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